A federal judge in Boston Monday will consider whether to block President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk from carrying out their unprecedented plan to buy out tens of thousands of federal employees.
Three federal employee unions — with the support of 20 Democratic attorneys general — have argued that the Office of Personnel Management’s deferred resignation offer is an “unlawful ultimatum” to force the resignation of government workers under the “threat of mass termination.”
“OPM’s Fork Directive is a sweeping and stunningly arbitrary action to solicit blanket resignations of federal workers,” wrote lawyers for the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the National Association of Government Employees. “Defendants have not even argued — nor could they — that the Fork Directive was the product of rational or considered decision-making.”
The buyout offer, part of the Trump’s effort to trim the size of government through Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, was sent out under the subject line “Fork in the Road” — the same language Musk used when he slashed jobs at Twitter after taking over that company in 2022.
In court, the Trump administration has described the buyout as one of the first steps in the president’s plan to “transform the federal workforce,” arguing that any further delay of the buyout would cause “remarkably disruptive and inequitable repercussions.”
Monday’s hearing comes less than two weeks after more than two million government employees received the “Fork in the Road” email from the Office of Personnel Management, offering full pay and benefits until September for any federal employee who accepted a deferred resignation by Feb. 6.
Just hours ahead of Thursday’s deadline for employees to accept the offer, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. — who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton — temporarily blocked the offer until Monday so he could consider issuing a temporary restraining offer pausing the order.
“I enjoined the defendants from taking any action to implement the so-called ‘Fork Directive’ pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” Judge O’Toole said in his ruling. “I believe that’s as far as I want to go today.”
In this Oct. 15, 2024, file photo, Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a campaign rally at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, FILE
The Trump administration, in response, “extended” the deadline for the offer, which more than 65,000 federal employees have already taken.
“We are grateful to the judge for extending the deadline so more federal workers who refuse to show up to the office can take the Administration up on this very generous, once-in-a-lifetime offer,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week.
The unions who brought the lawsuit argued that Trump exceeded his authority as president with the offer, which they described as a “slapdash resignation program.”
According to the plaintiffs, Trump’s offer violates federal law, lacks congressionally appropriated funding, and does not offer employees reassurance that the president would follow through with the offer. Their claim in part relies on a federal law from the 1940s called the Administrative Procedure Act that governs how federal agencies create and enforce rules.
“In the tech universe, ‘move fast and break things’ is a fine motto in part because they’re not playing with the public’s money, and it’s expected that most initiatives are going to fail,” Loyola Marymount law professor Justin Leavitt told ABC News. “Congress knows that, so in 1946 they basically said, ‘When agencies do stuff … they have to be careful about it. They’ve got to consider all aspects of the problem.”
The plaintiffs also argued that the buyout is unlawful because it relies on funding that Congress has yet to appropriate, violating the Antideficiency Act.
“Defendants’ ultimatum divides federal workers into two groups: (1) those who submit their resignations to OPM for a promised period of pay without the requirement to work, and (2) those who have not and are therefore subject to threat of mass termination,” the lawsuit said.
Lawyers for the federal government have pushed back on those claims, arguing that Trump has the legal authority to provide the buyout for employees within the federal branch, and that any further delay would do more harm than good.
“Extending the deadline for the acceptance of deferred resignation on its very last day will markedly disrupt the expectations of the federal workforce, inject tremendous uncertainty into a program that scores of federal employees have already availed themselves of, and hinder the Administration’s efforts to reform the federal workforce,” DOJ attorney Joshua E. Gardner wrote in a filing last week.
Judge O’Toole will consider issuing a temporary restraining order that would block enforcement of the offer for as long as two weeks.